Regarding the first Protestant critique of Pope Francis’s words on finding Jesus in the Church.

t did not take long. Nor did I sus­pect it might. Yes­ter­day I pre­dict­ed that it would not only be dis­senters with­in the Church, but also dis­senters out­side the Church, who would be stirred to ver­bal hand-wring­ing over this homi­ly by Pope Fran­cis. The key sen­tence in the homily—the source of said hand-wringing—is this one: “[I]t is not pos­si­ble to find Jesus out­side the Church.” And lo! but a few hours after I made my pre­dic­tion came this post from the famil­iar and pro­lif­ic TurretinFan—known here as Mr. X.

Here­in, I want to look at four main points that Mr. X stress­es in his response to Pope Fran­cis, and hope­ful­ly give a counter-response that clar­i­fies what I believe the pope to have had in mind; with this caveat lec­tor, that I am not nec­es­sar­i­ly giv­ing an infal­li­ble inter­pre­ta­tion here—just my own per­son­al under­stand­ing of what the pope was dri­ving at.

but that’s exclusivism!

Mr. X’s first point is to describe the state­ment as “exclu­sivis­tic,” and to con­trast it with the “mod­ern” [1], “inclu­sivis­tic” state­ments of—to cite the exam­ples Mr. X gives—Cardinal Fran­cis George and Car­di­nal George Pell. Car­di­nal George, as Mr. X quotes him, once had made a remark along the lines of Mor­monism hav­ing a “com­mon ground” in Jesus [2]. Car­di­nal Pell, sim­i­lar­ly, spoke words sug­gest­ing a belief in what Mr. X would like­ly con­sid­er a kind of near-uni­ver­sal­ism, name­ly, “that hell may be emp­ty or near­ly emp­ty” [3]. These state­ments, Mr. X believes, are at odds with what the pope has said about it being impos­si­ble to find Jesus any­where except the Catholic Church.

The sim­plest response to the charge of exclu­sivism is to say, well, yes. For that is, indeed, the point: Christ found­ed one Church. I doubt that Mr. X is against exclu­sivism in its own right; Reformed believ­ers are them­selves quite “exclu­sivis­tic” when they get into dis­cus­sions of who does or does not “have the Gospel.” Where the prob­lem begins for the Reformed apol­o­gist is when Catholi­cism claims exclu­siv­i­ty.  At that point, they cry foul. But they have no dif­fi­cul­ty claim­ing it for them­selves.

This point about exclu­siv­i­ty is, how­ev­er, a bit more com­pli­cat­ed and nuanced than Mr. X would want to have it. He spec­u­lates as much when he says—though the con­struc­tion of the thought is crude—“I can’t pre­dict whether this state­ment will be qual­i­fied to death, or not.” I find this to be a sur­pris­ing spec­u­la­tion com­ing from a pro­po­nent of Calvin­ism, whose nuances are sub­tle enough to per­plex a tax attor­ney.  For Calvin­ists could, just as equal­ly, be accused of “qual­i­fy­ing TULIP to death.” The Calvin­ist would—and, pos­si­bly, quite rightly—say that the­ol­o­gy by nature is only prop­er­ly under­stood through its nuances, and that a nuance is dif­fer­ent than an ad mortem qual­i­fi­ca­tion.

Now, in terms of the con­text of the pope’s words, a homi­ly sel­dom lends itself to the same sub­tleties and nuances that you might find in an encycli­cal let­ter, or the Insti­tutes of Elenc­tic The­ol­o­gy. The sit­u­a­tion might be some­what dif­fer­ent in a Reformed church, where expos­i­to­ry preach­ing is the cen­ter of wor­ship; but such is less fre­quent­ly the case in the Catholic Church, where the sac­ri­fice of the altar is the cen­ter of wor­ship. In an attempt to lend some nuance to the pope’s words, here is what I wrote in my orig­i­nal blog post on the sub­ject:

True ecu­menism is not pos­si­ble apart from the truth. … [Y]ou can­not for­go Christ’s pur­pos­es in favor of your own indi­vid­ual pref­er­ences or pet the­olo­gies.

What the pope is say­ing is some­thing along these lines: You may talk a great deal about Jesus; you may admire Jesus; you may love and adore Jesus. But out­side the Church, you haven’t found Jesus. This might sound like a sub­tle dis­tinc­tion, but it is impor­tant and it mat­ters. Christ is present in His Church; Christ is present in the sacra­ments; He is present in the Eucharist. That is where all the action of grace is, and there alone is the soul at rest. …

You may talk about Christ until you’re blue in the face, but you do not know Him; you have not encoun­tered Him; and your life is less than what He meant for it to be.

To unpack this a lit­tle fur­ther. An impor­tant dis­tinc­tion must be made between know­ing about Jesus—even think­ing high­ly of Him; even claim­ing Him as God; even under­stand­ing that the source of hope and sal­va­tion is in Him; even, indeed, rejoic­ing in Him—and hav­ing found Him. To find Jesus implies a more thor­ough union with him than mere knowl­edge or regard or even joy will sup­ply you with. Thus what I take the pope to be say­ing is that union with Christ is to be found only in the Catholic Church.

That is a very dif­fer­ent sort of state­ment alto­geth­er from what Car­di­nal George said, in the con­text of a dis­cus­sion of reli­gious lib­er­ty. Car­di­nal George mere­ly acknowl­edged Mor­mons’ “com­mon ref­er­ence point” in Christ (not com­mon “ground,” as Mr. X mis­quot­ed him).  Car­di­nal George gave a mere bland, innocu­ous con­ces­sion that Christ is in some sense the object of Mor­mon wor­ship. And the pope’s words are a very dif­fer­ent sort of state­ment from what Car­di­nal Pell said, in the con­text of a debate with Richard Dawkins. Car­di­nal Pell did noth­ing more than voice a per­son­al wish that no one is in Hell; and I should hope any Chris­t­ian would admit, that it is a griev­ous sin to wish that any cer­tain per­son is in Hell.  Who is in Hell, who is not, and how many, is a point on which there is no divine rev­e­la­tion; Car­di­nal Pel­l’s opin­ion on that ques­tion, what­ev­er it may be—and he did not give his opin­ion, only his hope—is mere per­son­al spec­u­la­tion, not Church dog­ma.

unpacking “separated brethren” for mr. x

Mr. X’s sec­ond point is to sug­gest that the con­cil­iar, Vat­i­can II con­cept of “sep­a­rat­ed brethren” does not quite square with the pope’s words. Saith Mr. X:

Are they ‘brethren’ who are sep­a­rat­ed from Jesus? If so, in what sense are they brethren? Like­wise, if peo­ple are poten­tial­ly saved “out­side the church,” then are they not saved through Jesus?

The answer to that ques­tion has to do with which word, “sep­a­rat­ed” or “brethren,” you think car­ries the sting. For Mr. X, the sting seems to be in the word “brethren.” As I explained in my ear­li­er post, how­ev­er, the sting is actu­al­ly in “sep­a­rat­ed”:

Grant­ed there is some the­o­log­i­cal nuance here, because the Church does­n’t say that non-Catholics nec­es­sar­i­ly won’t be saved. And that is absolute­ly true—though the key word here is ‘nec­es­sar­i­ly.’ Com­pla­cen­cy about this mat­ter is very dan­ger­ous. If the Church talks about ‘invin­ci­ble igno­rance,’ ‘invin­ci­ble’ is a pret­ty strict stan­dard. [There is a care­ful line to be drawn beween “invin­ci­ble” and “obsti­nate.”] And if the Church talks about ‘sep­a­rat­ed brethren,’ ‘sep­a­rat­ed’ is a pret­ty stark con­di­tion to be in.

To unpack again: What the “brethren” are sep­a­rat­ed from is the sacra­ments, which alone are where union with Christ (in this life) is to be had. Admit­ted­ly, that is a less­er form of union than will be expe­ri­enced in the Beatif­ic Vision; now we see through a glass, dark­ly (1 Cor. 13:12). But it is a greater form of union than can be encoun­tered any­where except the Catholic Church.

What the “sep­a­rat­ed brethren,” how­ev­er, are not sep­a­rat­ed from (not nec­es­sar­i­ly) is even­tu­al sal­va­tion in Christ. There are greater stum­bling blocks and obsta­cles out­side the Church than inside, but nei­ther does this mean that there will be more Catholics than non-Catholics in Heav­en. It means only that the Church is very care­ful to dif­fer­en­ti­ate between what has been revealed by God and what is mere spec­u­la­tion. The per­son­al iden­ti­ty of those who will be in Heav­en, and those who will be in Hell (and how many), has not been revealed to us; that is the ques­tion that Car­di­nal Pell was speak­ing to. And we are for­bid­den (Matt. 7:1) to engage in any such spec­u­la­tion. So to say, “Jesus is found only with­in the Catholic Church, but those out­side the Church are sep­a­rat­ed brethren and might still be saved by some means known only to God,” is just to make a very nuanced dis­tinc­tion between what is divine rev­e­la­tion and what is spec­u­la­tion.

To say that sep­a­rat­ed brethren—even though sep­a­rat­ed from hav­ing found Christ in the sense I’ve described—are nev­er­the­less still “brethren,” is sim­ply an acknowl­edg­ment that they believe, as Catholics do, that sal­va­tion is through Christ and no one else.

to love is not the same as to find

Mr. X’s third point is nei­ther an obser­va­tion nor a ques­tion, but a claim: “Our love of Christ should lead us to uni­ty with the brethren in the”—note the plural—“churches.”  On this, I would say that he—perhaps unwittingly—illustrates the very point I have been stress­ing through­out the present blog post. He speaks mere­ly of the love of Christ; when he stress­es uni­ty, the object of the verb is not Christ but the brethren. But Pope Fran­cis did not say, “It is not pos­si­ble to love Jesus out­side the Church”; he said, “It is not pos­si­ble to find Jesus out­side the Church.” There is a dif­fer­ence. I may love all kinds of things and nev­er find them; I may, for exam­ple, love a woman but nev­er expe­ri­ence mar­i­tal union with her. That is an imper­fect anal­o­gy, but it con­tains some­thing of the mean­ing I have in mind.

I must also call atten­tion to Mr. X’s use of the word “churches”—in the plur­al. That is not how Christ spoke. Christ spoke of build­ing His Church, sin­gu­lar (Matt. 16:18). He nev­er spoke of church­es. Now, if you want to talk about exclu­siv­i­ty: That’s it.

Christ is not bound to a book

Final­ly, Mr. X’s con­clud­ing point is the stan­dard sola scrip­tura meme: “Jesus is found in Scrip­ture.” Here­in lies one of the cru­cial dis­tinc­tions between Protes­tantism and Catholi­cism: Protes­tants con­fine Jesus to a book. That is an exag­ger­a­tion, but even in exag­ger­a­tion there is truth. In the pages of Sacred Scrip­ture there may indeed be found a great deal of knowl­edge about Jesus; by read­ing them, one may devel­op a great love for Jesus, and a firm under­stand­ing that He and no oth­er is the source of our sal­va­tion. For as St. Jerome said, “Igno­rance of Scrip­ture is igno­rance of Christ.” But the word “igno­rance” is the oppo­site of knowl­edge, not the oppo­site of union. One does not find union with Christ in Sacred Scrip­ture; union, nec­es­sar­i­ly, must be found in the Church, in the sacra­ments, through the life of faith. Only there­in is the union with Christ that I believe Fran­cis is talk­ing about when he speaks of “find­ing Jesus.”  One must occa­sion­al­ly close the book and go out to meet the man it is talk­ing about.

It is impor­tant to point out, too, that nei­ther may Jesus be found in encycli­cals or cat­e­chisms or dog­mat­ic def­i­n­i­tions. No. He is to be found through the sacra­ments. Christ must be alive in our hearts, in the life of our faith, and not con­fined to the pages of a book. That, and that alone, is what is to be under­stood as “find­ing Christ”; that, and that alone, is the pur­pose for which Christ said—not that He would write His book, but that he would build His Church.

The word is sin­gu­lar.

endnotes

[1] I think that by “mod­ern” Mr. X means only “con­tem­po­rary” or “recent.” The word “mod­ern” has a par­tic­u­lar con­text in Roman Catholic the­ol­o­gy, hav­ing to do with Pope St. Pius X’s con­dem­na­tion of the heresy of mod­ernism in his encycli­cal Pas­cen­di Domini­ci Greg­is. This is a big issue of con­tention between more tra­di­tion­al­ly-mind­ed Catholics and the more lib­er­al, “Spir­it of Vat­i­can II” Catholics. I doubt that this is the sense of the word that Mr. X has in mind.

[2] It’s impor­tant here to fol­low Mr. X’s ref­er­ence back two steps to Car­di­nal George’s orig­i­nal state­ment, which was this: “Our church­es [i.e., the Mor­mon and the Catholic] have dif­fer­ent his­to­ries and sys­tems of belief and prac­tice, although we acknowl­edge a com­mon ref­er­ence point in the per­son and gospel of Jesus Christ.” To say that Christ is a “ref­er­ence point” for Mor­mons is about as innocu­ous a state­ment as one can make; and one must remem­ber that Car­di­nal George was speak­ing pri­mar­i­ly to the sub­ject of coop­er­a­tion between Mor­mons and Catholics in defend­ing reli­gious lib­er­ty. Fun­ny how a lit­tle con­text can cast a dif­fer­ent light on a mere two quot­ed words–only one of which (“com­mon”) was accu­rate in the first place. I am not exact­ly cer­tain how Pope Fran­cis’s words are at odds with the bland acknowl­edg­ment that Jesus is a “ref­er­ence point” for Mor­mons.

[3] The quo­ta­tion here is Mr. X’s para­phrase of Car­di­nal Pell; and, once more, if you take the time to trace the state­ment back a few steps to its orig­i­nal source, you’ll dis­cov­er that it’s not what he said. Car­di­nal Pell did not say that he believes Hell will be “near­ly emp­ty.” What he actu­al­ly said, dur­ing the QA peri­od of a debate with Richard Dawkins, was: “I hope nobody’s in Hell” (~49:33). Such a state­ment of per­son­al char­i­ty and love for all, on the part of Car­di­nal Pell, hard­ly amounts to a cer­tain, the­o­log­i­cal dec­la­ra­tion of Hel­l’s pop­u­la­tion, though that seems to be the con­clu­sion Mr. X wants us to draw from his (slop­pi­ly inac­cu­rate) para­phrase.